The Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson

A review of Kim Stanley Robinson's multipl-award-winning trilogy on the colonisation and terraforming of Mars.

Red Mars

2027. A hundred of Earth's most skilled engineers and scientists are dispatched to Mars, braving radiation exposure to land on the Red Planet and establish a permanent scientific outpost. Their goal is to establish whether Mars can ever be a viable target for settlement and colonisation, and if terraforming the planet is possible or desirable.

Earth is overcrowded and choking, with national governments and transnational supercorporations (whose annual balance sheets outstrip the GDPs of most of the world's countries) feuding for control. Soon, vast reservoirs of water are discovered in hidden aquifers deep below the Martian surface, making colonies self-sustainable. To the transnats, this means that Mars can become a dumping ground for Earth's excess population. When valuable mineral deposits that Earth is crying out for are also discovered on Mars, then its exploitation for the benefit of the people of Earth becomes inevitable. The resulting clash of wills and desires of the transnational Earth corporations and the beleaguered settlers on Mars forced to accept hundreds of thousands of immigrants they cannot cope with can only have one possible outcome: revolution, and the cry for independence.

Kim Stanley Robinson's epic Mars Trilogy chronicles humanity's colonisation of Mars, beginning in the early 21st Century and extending over a period of some two centuries. The first book, which covers a period of some forty years, sees the initial settling of Mars by the First Hundred, the welcome arrival of additional waves of colonists intent on scientific research and then the more challenging problems of the arrival of hundreds of thousands of economic migrants, refugees and outcasts on a world that is not ready for them, and the resulting tensions between the newcomers and old-timers, and between the authorities on Mars and Earth.

The success of the trilogy as a whole is debatable, but this first volume, at least, is a masterpiece. Robinson's story rotates through a number of POV characters amongst the initial settlers, the First Hundred, and it rapidly becomes clear that most of them are somewhat unreliable narrators. Maya's complaints in her own POV of her 'important problems' being ignored by the base psychiatrist are given another perspective in her friend Nadia's POV, which reveals Maya is more interested in a trivial love triangle between herself and two Americans rather than in the colonisation of Mars, whilst the psychiatrist Michel's POV reveals that he is giving Maya colossal amounts of time and attention (to the detriment of his own mental health) which is unappreciated. Robinson repeats this trick several times, showing that the ultra-laidback and inspirational John Boone (the First Man on Mars) achieves his famous demeanour through the assistance of addictive drugs, whilst self-deprecating Nadia is actually the most universally-respected of the First Hundred. Character is thus built up in layers, from both internal viewpoints and external sources, making these central characters very well-realised (although characters outside the central coterie can be a little on the thin side).

Whilst the characters are important, it is Mars itself which is the central figure of the book. Robinson brings a dead planet to vivid life, emphasising the differences in terrain and character between the frozen northern polar icecap and the water-cut channels in the depths of the Valles Marineris, with the massive mountains of Tharsis towering high into the atmosphere and colonists eagerly staking claims to future beachfront properties in Hellas, the lowest point on Mars and the first place to see the benefits of terraforming. The ideas of Mars as it is now as a pristine, beautiful but harsh landscape and the habitable world it could be are sharply contrasted, and the rights and wrongs of terraforming form a core argument of the novel. I get the impression that Robinson sides with Ann Clayborne's view that the planet should be left untouched, but he is realistic enough to know this will not happen, if Mars can be settled and exploited in a way that is economically feasible. Mars in this work becomes a success of SF worldbuilding to compete with Helliconia and Arrakis, losing only a few points for actually existing.

On the downside, Robinson hits a few bad notes. Some of these are unavoidable consequences of the book being nearly twenty years old. Even in 1992 the notion that the Chinese would not play a major role in the financing and undertaking of a Mars colonisation mission only forty years hence was somewhat fanciful, but today it is almost unthinkable. More notably, the global recession has made the possibility of a manned mission to Mars, let alone a full-scale colonisation effort, by the 2020s somewhat dubious. Of course, these are issues Robinson could not hope to predict in the optimistic, post-Soviet Union years of the early 1990s.

Other problems are more notable. Robinson goes to some lengths to make the pro-terraforming and anti-terraforming sides of the debate both understandable and intelligent, but his political sympathies are much more one-sided. The pro-Martian independence brigade have charismatic leaders and a grass-roots movement of plucky, honest-men-against-the-machine supporters to their name, whilst the pro-Earth-control movement is led by a fundamentalist conservative Christian and resorts to weapons and mass-slaughter extremely easily. Robinson, to his credit, recognises this problem in later books and tries to repair the damage somewhat (Phyllis, presented extremely negatively in Red Mars, is shown in a more sympathetic light in later volumes), but there remains a feeling of political bias in this first volume. In addition, it sometimes feels that Robinson really wants the reader to know about the years of research he put into the book, with tangents and divergences which make the book feel like half a novel and half a factual science volume on how the possible colonisation of Mars might happen. For those fascinated by the real-life plans to terraform Mars (like me) this isn't an issue, but for some it may be. It is also, by far, the biggest problem the sequels face.

Nevertheless, the sheer, massive scope and complexity of Red Mars makes up for this. There is an overwhelming feeling running through this novel unlike almost any other hard SF novel ever published, that this might actually happen. Maybe not as soon as 2027, maybe not with such a determined push towards colonisation and terraforming right from the off, but one day, barring the collapse of our civilisation, we will go to Mars, and many of the challenges and problems faced by the First Hundred in this book are issues that will need to be overcome to make that possibility a reality.

Plus, and this cannot be undervalued, the dry and more sedentary tone of the earlier parts of the book are made up for by the final 100 pages or so, which contains one sequence which ranks amongst the most memorable and stunning moments of SF imagery achieved in the history of the genre to date. Robinson may have the image of being a bit of a laidback Californian optimist, but he sets to blowing stuff up at the end of the book with a relish that makes even Greg Bear look unambitious.

Red Mars (****½) is an awe-inspiring feat of SF worldbuilding and a vital novel on the colonisation of our neighbouring world, let down by a few moments of naivete and simplistic straw-manning of political points of view not to Robinson's liking. Overcoming this, the central characters are fascinating, the sheer scope of the book is stunning and the climatic revolution sequence is dramatic and spectacular. The novel is available (with a nice new British cover) in the UK and USA.

I was extremely unimpressed with Red Mars. Though the technology descriptions were great, the politics and personalities were face-palmingly anachronistic (square-jawed American cowboy heroes who love fast cars, idealistic Russians seeking egalitarian utopia, spiritual Japanese woman seeking oneness with nature), the future-historical assumptions were as unrealistic as Wert says, and the character interactions were painfully stilted (the dialogue reads like a bunch of speeches). Basically, it reads like something written in the 1950s, but was actually written in the 1990s.

Basically, this book (don't know about the other two) is great for those who want a realistic technical description of what it would be like to colonize Mars, and a big yawner for anyone who requires a good story and world background.

I tried on three occasions to read Red Mars but couldn't finish the book. After failing to connect with Robinson's Galileo's Dream earlier in the year, I've come to realize my reading sensibilities just don't mesh with his writing.

I was extremely unimpressed with Red Mars. Though the technology descriptions were great, the politics and personalities were face-palmingly anachronistic (square-jawed American cowboy heroes who love fast cars, idealistic Russians seeking egalitarian utopia, spiritual Japanese woman seeking oneness with nature), the future-historical assumptions were as unrealistic as Wert says, and the character interactions were painfully stilted (the dialogue reads like a bunch of speeches). Basically, it reads like something written in the 1950s, but was actually written in the 1990s.

Basically, this book (don't know about the other two) is great for those who want a realistic technical description of what it would be like to colonize Mars, and a big yawner for anyone who requires a good story and world background.

Click to expand...

Completely agree with the above: I remember i slugged dutifully through volume 2 when it was published before flipping through volume 3 to see what happens and i stopped reading the author since - only recently gave a try to Galileo since i received a bunch of copies for some reasons and it had the same unreadable prose for me...

Plus, and this cannot be undervalued, the dry and more sedentary tone of the earlier parts of the book are made up for by the final 100 pages or so, which contains one sequence which ranks amongst the most memorable and stunning moments of SF imagery achieved in the history of the genre to date.

Click to expand...

Any book that is dry and sedentary for the first 500 pages cannot make up for it in the last 100. No one should have to suffer through 5/6ths of a book to get to a good part. I am in the club that could not get past the booooooring writing.

More notably, the global recession has made the possibility of a manned mission to Mars, let alone a full-scale colonisation effort, by the 2020s somewhat dubious.

Click to expand...

In Robinson's defense, I don't think he was trying to write an accurate time table prediction of the future, I think he just set it in the near future, but when the technology was feasible. He never claimed to be Hari Seldon!

Red Mars is a fascinating speculation on how Mars could be colonized, but I hate this type of characterization where the characters are little more than mouthpieces for certain viewpoints. Not only is such characterization uninteresting, it renders irrelevant the millions of people whose lives are impacted by the events in the novel.

I thought Red Mars was great. This is why I think we need archetype books so we can come up with categories and people can figure out what categories THEY LIKE.

It is like stories have foregrounds and backgrounds. The characters do and say things in the foreground but the background creates the situation that the characters must deal with. In Red Mars the background story is more important than the foreground story and foreground doesn't concentrate on a particular character or small number of characters, like the bridge crew in ST:TNG. It is like those 100 people are up against Mars and the history of humanity.

But how much is it like the state of the world today but without the ability to get to Mars. All of the large scale human problems described in Red Mars are in the world today. I would be surprised if some method of doubling or tripling life expectancy is not found in this century. But what will the effect of that be?

Good SF is about science, technology and what humanity does with it. If some people only want it as entertainment then they will probably ignore certain aspects that make it good as SCIENCE fiction. They are only interested in it as literature.

A science fiction story is a story built around human beings, with a human problem and a human solution, which would not have happened at all without its scientific content. - Theodore Sturgeon

Click to expand...

That is why bad science makes bad science fiction regardless of how entertaining it is.

One of the funniest things about Red Mars was in the voyage out where they all admit that they lied to the psychologists. The psychology class was referred to with a sexist derogatory term at the engineering school I attended because it was so easy. Everybody got at least a B and getting an A just required more idiotic busy work that probably wasn't worth the time when there was math and physics to do. But I have had conversations with psychologists. Sometimes I think psychology is the study of not thinking and psychologists expect people to be stupid.

I greatly appreciate the time the official reviewers take to review novels on sffworld. However, I will say that it is very difficult to find a novel they don't recommend. They have a couple hundred books in their official reviews section, but after clicking on over 25, there weren't any they didn't like, including a few very weak novels. They almost always address the flaws in a book, but then thoroughly recommend it at the end. I've often wondered if it is a conscious effort to avoid offending an author, or some other reason.

I can't speak for SFFWorld, but in my case if a book is truly excruciatingly awful I am simply unlikely to finish it, and if I don't finish the book, it doesn't get a review.

Finally, someone agrees with Wert's review!

Click to expand...

Horses for courses. On other forums people are gushing with praise for the book and there isn't one bad word against it, on yet others opinions are more mixed.

Also, novels simply shouldn't have diagrams.

Click to expand...

Helliconia has diagrams (admittedly in the appendix, not present in all editions of the book). Also, if a book can have maps, I don't see any reason why it can't have diagrams. The Mars calendar (the real-life one) is quite hard to visualise without a diagram, although the psychiatric diagrams in Michel's chapters were not very useful.

I greatly appreciate the time the official reviewers take to review novels on sffworld. However, I will say that it is very difficult to find a novel they don't recommend. They have a couple hundred books in their official reviews section, but after clicking on over 25, there weren't any they didn't like, including a few very weak novels. They almost always address the flaws in a book, but then thoroughly recommend it at the end. I've often wondered if it is a conscious effort to avoid offending an author, or some other reason.

I personally think it's a good thing that so many books get good reviews. It's more important for reviewers to describe a book's strengths - and hence to steer people who'd like it toward reading it - than to warn people away from a bad book. I'd rather read 10 good books and try and discard 20 bad ones than read only 2 good books and no bad ones.

I quite enjoyed the Mars books when I read them years ago. Like Wert has admitted, much of it has not aged well, but I would still recommend them. I think Red Mars was probably the best. It gets a little boring later after the main parts of terraforming are complete.

I have read Red and Green Mars (Blue is sitting on my shelf from years ago unread). The books were ok in my opinion. Rather interesting in the ideas used to create a colonisation on Mars, but there wasn't really any page-turning story underneath, nothing that really made me want to keep reading. So if it wasn't for the 'scientific' aspects I doubt I would have finished Red Mars.

Well I like Robinson's writing. I really liked Antartica, which had great science but also interesting social stuff going on and good characters.

But I did have a lot of problems with Red Mars. It wasn't so much the writing, which was okay, though not Robinson's best. The problem was that a lot of the science seemed quite off to me -- this came up in a conversation we had about big science blunders awhile back -- and the logistics of the mission were completely unrealistic. Ben Bova did slightly better in Mars and Mary Russell did far worse in The Sparrow, but all of these books seem to be riffing off Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, which is an entertaining story that is a mess in terms of realistic world building. Essentially, they keep trying to make it like a colonizing expedition on some spot on Earth would be, except with Mars not having oxygen. In reality, the countries would keep much tighter control of a mission, it would be much more military, and you would not be able to set up hippy dippy utopia colonies like your Wild West frontier pioneers. You certainly wouldn't be able to sneak stuff onboard the spaceships. The progress the mission made on Mars was completely out of whack with how they'd do it, even in the 1990's.

So for me, the story just doesn't end up making a lot of sense. The destructive love triangle is fine, but frankly it just becomes more and more of a surprise that all of these people aren't killed off within a very short span of time. And the Heinlein/Dick/etc. view that all these colonies will rebel against Mother Earth like the U.S. colonists against England -- it is a rather dated view and not very plausible.

So some of the science I liked, some of the situations, the characters, enough perhaps that I might read the rest because I'd like to see more of the terraforming, but it was something of a disappointment for me. I'm more interested in reading some of his other works instead at this point. And I don't think it's really the definitive terra-forming work yet; I think we're still waiting for that. Maybe if we solve some of the problems down here first, like deep sea oil leaks.